Home/ Questions/Q 6922031
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-27T10:21:13+00:00

I am trying to create a simplified search box that will match multiple columns

  • 0

I am trying to create a simplified search box that will match multiple columns against a keyword or keywords the user inputs. The following code is my attempt at using MySQL’s MATCH/AGAINST. However, I cannot get the query to execute properly when there are two columns specified, in this case ‘topic, country’. It will execute when I run the code as either ‘country’ or ‘topic’, but not both.

Is there a secret to this?

SELECT * ,
MATCH (
topic, country
)
AGAINST (
'China'
) AS score
FROM reports2
WHERE MATCH (
topic, country
)
AGAINST (
'China'
)
ORDER BY score DESC

yields:

#1191 - Can't find FULLTEXT index matching the column list

Which I find to be an inaccurate description of the error, because there are FULLTEXT indices for both of these. I even copied the table, turned it into MyISAM from INNODB, in order to do so.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You don’t need fulltext indices for each column, but a single fulltext index covering both columns

    FULLTEXT_INDEX(topic, country)

    Having a single index on each column will not work

    FULLTEXT(topic); FULLTEXT(country); /* will not work as expected */

    I also think that order is important, but I could be mistaken in that regard

    • 0